Nagpur cyber police raid three states, arrest eight in online frauds worth crores

Nagpur cyber police have taken major action against inter-state cyber gangs that cheated people of crores of rupees through various online fraud methods. While investigating four separate cases, police raided locations in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and arrested eight accused in all.

The first case involves a Rs 2.87 crore fraud in the name of share trading. Two persons were arrested from Borivali in Mumbai. The investigation has found that the gang's links extend to cyber fraud networks in Hong Kong and Dubai.

A man was connected to a fake "FTMO" trading platform through an Instagram advertisement and a Telegram group. He was then made to invest Rs 2.87 crore through 33 separate transactions, and was defrauded. Police had arrested Kakasaheb Mohan Darunde of Patoda in Beed district on October 15. The investigation revealed that he handled current corporate bank accounts of various private companies and made them available to the main masterminds of the cyber fraud.

Acting on information from Darunde, a police team camped in the Borivali area of Mumbai for six days. One of the accused was called out of his home on the pretext that a food delivery parcel had arrived. With the help of Borivali police, Bhupendra Mahavir Jain (32) and Yogesh Parasmal Jain (37), both from Beawar in Rajasthan's Ajmer district, were then arrested. A court has remanded both to three days in police custody.

The investigation also showed that the defrauded money was moved from a corporate account at RBL Bank to 38 bank accounts through 39 transactions in just 24 seconds. The SIM card of the mobile number used for internet banking and mobile handsets were also recovered from the accused. Police seized articles worth about Rs 10 lakh from the accused. The probe has also found that the accused were in contact with cyber fraud networks in Hong Kong and Dubai.

In the second case, a man was threatened with "digital arrest" by someone posing as an official of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and was cheated of Rs 1 crore 4 lakh. Two more persons have been arrested in this case. They are Dinesh Ambabhai Ravaria (32), a resident of Santacruz West, Mumbai, and Arvind Kanji Gala (45), a resident of Tardeo Road, Mumbai.

Police arrested the two from Mumbai on Saturday and seized two mobile phones from them. The court has granted three days of police custody for both. Police have also succeeded in getting Rs 8.5 lakh returned to the victim in this case.